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ID:
177877
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| Summary/Abstract |
Studies of the Russian legal system underscored the discrepancy between formal legal order and the informal practices used to maintain control over the judiciary. This essay argues that, despite laws introducing meritocratic principles of judicial selection at the beginning of the 1990s, the patronage of court presidents continues to significantly outweigh all other candidate characteristics, such as education and professional experience. By analysing 957 protocols issued by the judicial qualification boards (JQBs), I show that the influence of court presidents on the JQBs’ decision-making in the selection process undermines judicial independence and accountability.
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| 2 |
ID:
187665
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| Summary/Abstract |
Many nondemocracies hold multiparty elections while also adopting institutions of de jure judicial independence; yet there is debate over how nondemocratic courts can affect election integrity. This paper argues that increased de jure independence creates incentives for opposition recourse to the courts, which reduces election fraud due to greater legal exposure for election-manipulating agents and the ruling party. However, this effect occurs only when competition is low and the ruling party has limited incentive to intervene. These predictions are distinct from those of prior work, and they are supported by an analysis of cross-national election-year data from 1945 to 2014. Preprocessing techniques are used to reduce concerns about endogeneity and confounding. The results show that principal-agent dynamics can occur in manipulated elections even when incumbents remain in office, challenge the centrality of protest risk as a deterrent to manipulation, and offer a framework for predicting when de jure reforms translate to behavioral independence.
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| 3 |
ID:
162457
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| Summary/Abstract |
Authoritarian regimes are not known for adopting independent courts, yet the frequency of states empowering their judiciaries has steadily increased. In 1961 only 9% of autocracies had a partially or fully independent court, but by 1987 more than one-third of authoritarian states had reformed their judiciaries. Initiating judicial reform is risky for a regime that seeks to maintain its authority over its populace, including risks to their preferred policy positions and judgments that run contrary to the preferences of the regime. Given these risks, why do authoritarian leaders often relinquish authority to independent courts? This article argues regime leaders will choose to empower at least nominally independent courts in order to resolve information problems that lead to bargaining failures and civil war. This project uses propensity score matching to account for the complex relationship between institutional arrangement and civil war, and finds that states that adopt an independent court reduce their risk of civil war between 54% and 75% when compared to states that are equally likely to have adopted an independent court, but did not. These results suggest that leaders seeking to reduce uncertainty when bargaining with potential oppositions groups have strong incentives to implement independent judiciaries, and improve our understanding of how and why authoritarian leaders choose to delegate authority to independent judicial institutions.
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| 4 |
ID:
179292
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| Summary/Abstract |
The local party-state has always been a major source of extrajudicial influence in China. Drawing on interviews with judges, this article examines the impact of Xi Jinping's ambitious judicial centralization reforms, which are aimed at enhancing judicial autonomy by transferring authority over local court personnel and finances from local to provincial level. It finds that the reforms have achieved limited results. Although many appointment and budgetary powers were formally transferred to the provincial level, the local party-state retains considerable influence in both areas owing to its superior manpower, local knowledge and, in the case of developed regions, financial resources. Moreover, the local party-state maintains significant informal influence over the courts, which require many forms of discretionary assistance from various state organs – ranging from appropriating land for new courthouses to providing police protection for remote tribunals – in order to function. This setback highlights the depth and complexity of the courts’ political and economic embeddedness and serves as a reminder of the inherent difficulty of institutionalizing judicial autonomy, however limited, in a large and diverse party-state.
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| 5 |
ID:
096283
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In 2006, President Bush publicly stated that, in relation to the same-sex marriage issue, "activist judges" were thwarting the preferred policy of the elected representatives and the expression of popular will embodied in popular initiatives and constitutional amendments. Notwithstanding the philosophical discussion of the constitutionally assigned role of courts in the political system and the idea of judicial independence, President Bush's statement raises an interesting empirical question: In the case of same-sex marriage, have state and federal courts really acted in direct opposition to the expressed policy preferences of current or recent legislative majorities or overturned popular initiatives and constitutional amendments? Using evidence from state and federal legislative and judicial action around same-sex marriage primarily from the fifteen years preceding President Bush's 2006 statement, I argue that, with some rare exceptions, judges can not easily be identified as "activist" on the issue of same-sex marriage even if we assess their actions according to President Bush's criteria.
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| 6 |
ID:
084778
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| 7 |
ID:
084781
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| 8 |
ID:
100997
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
To assess the degree of judicial autonomy under an autonomous framework, there are five criteria concerning the courts of the autonomous entity: (1) judicial independence; (2) jurisdiction on purely local matters; (3) the power of final adjudication; (4) the power of final interpretation of its own constitution; and (5) a fair mechanism to resolve disputes arising from conflicts between the exercise of powers by the autonomous entity and the sovereign state. The judicial autonomy of Hong Kong after China resumed to exercise sovereignty over Hong Kong is examined according to these criteria. The substantial differences between Hong Kong's economic, legal, constitutional, and political systems and China's may explain the subtle conflicts that the Hong Kong judiciary has encountered in the last 13 years. The Hong Kong Judiciary has learned that it can only exercise its judicial autonomy in accordance with its sense of constitutional justice inherited mainly from the common law if it can tactfully handle the inherent differences between "one country" and "two systems." However, whether that means a weakened version of judicial autonomy or a strategic way to achieve the highest attainable degree of judicial autonomy within constraints is a matter on which commentators have different opinions.
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| 9 |
ID:
068391
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| 10 |
ID:
147083
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| Summary/Abstract |
There is broad agreement in the literature that international courts (ICs) make decisions with bounded discretion in relation to state governments. However, the scope of this discretion, and the determinants of its boundaries, are highly contested. In particular, the central mechanism in separation-of-powers models of judicial politics—the possibility of legislative override—has raised controversy. We argue that the uncertainty that judges face regarding the political reactions to their decisions has important and undertheorized implications for their behavior. On the one hand, cautious judges are likely to be attentive to signals that contain information about the probability of an unfavorable override. On the other hand, misjudgments of the political risks are likely to be made. Thus, the possibility of override is a significant factor affecting judicial behavior, but it is also a fairly blunt mechanism for balancing the independence and accountability of courts. The empirical study focuses on the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which has long been at the center of theory development regarding the legalization of world politics and the rise of international courts. The results demonstrate a strong correlation between the CJEU's rulings and the political signals it receives, in a pattern that goes beyond legal merit, and that fits with the override mechanism. State governments are crucial parts of the broader audience that defines the political boundaries of judicial discretion.
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| 11 |
ID:
084780
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| 12 |
ID:
084787
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| 13 |
ID:
084782
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| 14 |
ID:
129609
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Courts have become an increasing focus for political contestation in Southeast Asia. Yet little is known about the basis of their political power and legitimacy. Drawing on recent scholarship in the field of judicial politics, and presenting a case study of the Philippine Supreme Court after the transition to democracy in 1986, this article explores the conditions under which the Court has exercised its powers in the context of a democratizing state such as the Philippines. More specifically, it will show how strong public support has enabled the Court to exercise its judicial review powers and its authority over contending political actors. In drawing attention to the understudied link between public support and judicial assertiveness, the paper aims to advance existing scholarship by going beyond existing indicators of judicial independence and to provide new insights into the dynamics of evolving constitutional practice in the region through the interaction of the courts with the public.
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| 15 |
ID:
132941
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines judicial reforms in the new member states of the EU in a comparative perspective. It explores the interactions between domestic and European actors in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and explains why the EU has had a differential impact on the way the principle of judicial independence has been implemented nationally. The differential impact of the EU is explained by considering both the nature of EU conditionality and the relationship between the judiciary and the political actors at the domestic level. The comparison reveals that the power of the EU is greater when tensions at the domestic level between judicial and political actors increase.
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| 16 |
ID:
084791
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| 17 |
ID:
084783
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